A Parents Guide to ChatGPT
There has been a lot of buzz in the news about ChatGPT. People are using this Artificial Intelligence app to create content that is almost indiscernible from human-generated content.
What do parents need to know about ChatGPT and how will it impact their children?
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI and is a program that uses artificial intelligence to generate text. ChatGPT takes a user’s prompt and generates a response in a conversational format. It can solve math problems, tell stories, write poetry, and more.
How Does it Work?
ChatGPT gathers information from across the internet and uses a language model that has been trained to understand and respond naturally. When given a prompt it generates text by using the most likely option, similar to predictive text on your phone. What makes ChatGPT different is its ability to access a large amount of information and its ability to provide a human-like response.
Should Kids Use ChatGPT
Many school districts have banned the use of ChatGPT out of concern for students using it to write essays or complete assignments. Educators worry that students will try to pass off the AI-generated content as their own, thus cheating. Additionally, the content ChatGPT isn’t always accurate as the database is only current up to the year 2021.
According to OpenAI’s Terms of Use, users must be 18 years of age or older. However, there isn’t an age verification when creating an account.
ChatGPT does not have a filter that censors inappropriate content, so parents need to be aware that generated content may not always be safe for kids.
What Parents Should Do?
Parents need to know the benefits and risks of new technology before giving their kids access to it. It can be difficult to keep up with all of the new technology, especially when very little is known if it will be harmful or helpful for families.
Talk to your children about the benefits and dangers of using ChatGPT. Remind them that even though the technology is impressive it’s never OK to plagiarize or cheat.
Be engaged with the new technology with your child so you can both learn how it works and the pros and cons of its offerings.
